Outage-prone WV's AEP, FirstEnergy utilities show 2022 was a year of electric reliability setbacks in reports to PSC

Electric reliability has long been an issue in outage-prone West Virginia.

Newly filed reliability reports from West Virginia’s investor-owned utilities suggest the issue has gotten worse.

Appalachian Power, Wheeling Power, Mon Power and Potomac Edison annual reliability reports for 2022 required by the Public Service Commission filed in recent days showed decreased reliability across metrics measuring the ability to avoid power interruptions.

Appalachian Power reported figures indicating a 15% increase from 2021 to 2022 in an index used to measure average interruption frequency with major event days in which interruption duration passes a certain threshold. The utility also reported increases in indices measuring average interruption and duration frequency without major event days from 2021 to 2022.

Wheeling Power reported a 23% increase in its average system interruption frequency index and a 170% increase in an index used to measure average system interruption duration, both with major event days included.

Sustained interruptions caused by equipment failures rose 17% with major event days excluded and reliability complaints increased 49% from 2021 to 2022 for Appalachian Power, according to a Gazette-Mail review of the company’s reliability reports.

Appalachian Power’s system average interruption duration index increased from 2017 to 2022 both including and excluding major event days, despite a vegetation management program surcharge and other reliability efforts.

“We are concerned about those numbers,” PSC Chairman Charlotte Lane said in an email through a spokesperson when asked about the 2022 reliability figures reported by Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power as well as Mon Power and Potomac Edison.

Lane said the numbers would be addressed in an Appalachian Power filing in the spring of 2024, when a 2021 PSC order required the four utilities to reevaluate their reliability targets.

Potomac Edison didn’t meet any of its targets, which it attributed in its filing to an increase in equipment failures as well as outages caused by substations and animals.

In its reliability filing, Mon Power attributed its failure to meet a customer average interruption duration index target to much higher storm activity and a small number of large outages, including a broken crossarm on a large, rural transmission line that affected over 2,700 customers.

Appalachian Power spokesman Phil Moye said system interruption duration results in 2022 were impacted by weather, citing high rainfall from May to August and elevated storm activity, especially in June and July.

In 2011, the state Public Service Commission imposed rules for electric reliability requirements in response to outages caused by a 2009 winter storm. Those rules required utilities to submit annual reliability reports listing outage duration and frequency data, number and causes of sustained power interruptions and planned improvements for utilities’ worst-performing circuits.

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